Earth Simulator

By Lev GrossmanMonday, Nov. 18, 2002

Japan Marine Science and Technology Center

Inventor: Various

In 1997 a team of Japanese engineers dared to imagine a computer so powerful that it could keep track of everything in the world at once  steaming rain forests in Bolivia, factories in Mexico belching smoke, the jet stream, the Gulf Stream, the works. What's more, they dared to build it. On March 11, 2002, when they turned it on, the engineers did something no mere mortal had ever done before: they created the Earth.